


The Lie

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 16:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, Rumpelstiltskin had a wife. He lost her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lie

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS FOR THE CROCODILE - Pure fangirl speculation based on sneakpeeks.

Once upon a time, there was a girl.

She didn't have much by way of prospects, but she married respectably enough. He was a young spinner with a ridiculous name that made her laugh. She was a few years younger than him. He was shy, but her confidence more than made up for it.

They had a small cottage, which was more than any of her sisters had, and quickly enough, they had a child to put in it. They called him Baelfire, for he was born was autumn verged on winter and the solstice fires were burning. Her husband did not love her, and nor did she love him, but they were fond enough of one another. Their son, though, they both loved with a passion that scared her.

Baelfire was only a year old when the news broke of war.

Her little husband, shy and timid, avoided the first ranks of conscriptions for spinners were needed. The nobles needed clothed, after all. They could not go about in threadbare clothing, even if the poorer people from their lands were dying in the battles in the north. 

He sometimes spoke of it, around the fire in the village’s great hall. Few listened, for there were few left to hear, but when he spoke, he spoke of the strangeness of the war, of the number of men of their rank who were never seen again, while the nobility thrived. Milah tutted and hushed him, for such things were not meant to be spoken of, even if none of the nobility could hear. 

When the next rounds of conscriptions came, less were willing. 

Many of their men had not returned, and those who did seldom spoke of what they had seen. 

Milah's husband put his name on the page. She knew why he did it. The armies were moving closer. Their son was so small, he would be crushed in an instant by the ogres. His father wanted to protect him, frail and small as he was. Milah would have donned armour herself, if she had been permitted, but women were not allowed to battle.

She would sit by night at the fire, dandling their son her lap and waiting for news.

The battles were progressing. The armies had stopped moving. It would be over soon.

Her world fell in only weeks later.

It was the middle of the night and the door crashed inwards. Baelfire woke with a frightened cry, and Milah pulled her kitchen knife from beneath her straw mattress, cradling her son against her chest. She looked towards the door, and the man standing there.

It was Rumpelstiltskin. 

He was soaked to the skin, trembling by the last glowing embers of the fire in the hearth. Milah laid Baelfire down, rising from the mattress to approach him. Her husband stared at her like a hunted animal. There were tears on his face and his clothing was dark with blood and mud. 

"Are they here?" she asked, her voice shaking. "Are they coming?"

Rumpelstiltskin shook his head, reaching out to her with trembling hands. "Bae," he whispered. "Where's Bae?"

She stared at him incomprehending, then waved in the direction of the bed. He staggered there, gathering Baelfire in his arms and hugging him. The child protested, but Rumpelstiltskin didn't seem to notice. He seemed in a daze, bloody and broken.

Milah approached the bed and knelt. "What did you do?" she asked, her voice shaking. "Rumpelstiltskin, what are you doing here?"

He stared at her blankly. "I had to see Bae," he whispered. "Before I died, I had to see Bae."

A cold knot twisted in her stomach. "You ran?"

Rumpelstiltskin looked down at their boy. "I'll go back," he whispered. "I will. I'll go back. But I had to see Bae."

Milah touched his cheek, startled at how he flinched from her. "You can't stay," she said. "You know what they'll do if they find you here." She caught his head between her hands. Her husband was always so quiet, but he had never flinched from her before. "Rumpel, you need to go back. Quickly. It will be worse if they find you. They'll punish you."

He didn't seem to hear her, rocking Bae.

There were shouts outside, voices raised, and she hurried over to the door, peering out. The Duke's son. Gods. If they knew there was a runaway already, then they would be hunting for him. She dragged her cloak off the hook, pulling her boots on, and stepped out into the rain. 

“What’s amiss?” she called, hurrying towards them, obscuring Rumpelstiltskin’s footprints with her own. 

One of the men raised a lantern, illuminating her face and she raised a hand to shield her eyes from it.

“We have a runaway,” he said. “A coward who fled the front. He was seen coming this way.”

Milah thought of her husband, trembling, with the wish to see his son before he died on the front. “No man has come this way,” she lied. “We have little enough here. I think we would have heard if someone had come this way.” She put her head to one side. “Surely one man can’t make such a difference.”

The Duke’s son and his men exchanged glances.

“We can wait until morning,” the Duke’s son said.

Milah’s hands were shaking. It was enough time. Enough to send Rumpelstiltskin back on his way. He was lost. He hadn’t realised that compared to the ogres, the Duke would hardly be considered merciful. 

She fled back to the house, hurrying to Rumpelstiltskin’s side. He was still staring at their son, their child cradled in his arms. She lifted his face, forced him to look at her. “Rumpel,” she said softly, urgently. “Rumpel, they’re here. The Duke’s son and his men. They’re looking for you. They want to hurt you.”

He looked blankly at her. “Milah?”

“Gods, Rumpel, what happened to you?”

“They killed Andos,” he said vaguely. “I saw one of them take him by the arms and tear him into pieces.”

She struck his cheek, as if it would wake him from this dull blankness. It seemed to do nothing more than redden his cheek. “Rumpel, you have to go,” she whispered urgently. “You have to go back. Run back as fast as you can! If you go back, they can’t punish you.” She pressed her brow to his. “If you go back, then you can fight and return as a hero.”

“He was in pieces, Milah,” her husband whispered. “Still alive, but in pieces. Screaming.”

“Gods, Rumpel,” Milah said, shaking him. “You’ll be screaming if you don’t go. Please. For Bae’s sake. You have to go back.”

“For Bae?”

She nodded. “Bae needs his father to be strong. You need to protect us.”

Rumpelstiltskin laid the sleeping child down. “Strong,” he whispered. He reached out and embraced her. “I-I’ll go back.”

With the night as his cloak, he slipped out into the darkness. 

 

_______________________________________

 

 

Shouts woke the village with morning.

Milah hoisted Bae onto her hip and rushed to the window, looking out. 

The Duke’s men were there already, dragging someone behind their horses. He was pinioned with his arms bound over a shaft of wood. He had been beaten bloody, and Milah’s heart felt like it had stopped in her chest.

Rumpelstiltskin.

Calia, the Thatcher’s wife, slipped into the house. “Don’t go out there, Milah,” she whispered. “You can’t help him.”

“He was going back, Calia,” Milah said, her voice shaking. “He was going back to fight.”

“They don’t care about that.”

Milah pushed her son into Calia’s arms and rushed out of the house. Rumpelstiltskin was on his knees on the ground, and she could see the clothes across his back were torn where a whip had cut through them. 

“This man,” the Duke’s son said, gesturing to her husband, “is a coward.”

The people were silent and sullen. It was easy to call someone a coward when you were spending your time harassing the people on your father’s land and had never seen a battle. The Duke’s son was not well-liked in the village. Too many women had caught his eye.

Rumpelstiltskin was hoisted back to his feet by two of the soldiers.

“I was going back,” he whispered. “I was going back.”

“A likely story.” The Duke’s son punched him hard in the belly.

“Stop it!” Milah exclaimed. “He was! He was going back!”

The Duke’s son and his men looked at her. “I told you,” the Duke’s son said. “She knew he was there all along.”

Milah balled her fists. “And he was going back.”

“He ran,” the Duke’s son said, looking straight at her. “And because this man ran, it turned the tide of the battle.” He walked towards her, his expression making her stomach twist. “Because he ran, his whole legion, every man serving from this village, was wiped out.”

That was when they all turned. That was the moment where her husband was no longer a pitiable survivor, but the one who had brought death on them all. Several women sank to sit, others uttered sounds of despair.

Because of one man. 

That was what she had said to him the night before.

Because of one man.

It was a lie. It had to be a lie. Using her own words against her and her husband.

But how could she argue? He was a Duke’s son, and if she spoke out, she would be beaten as badly as her husband, and neither of them would be capable of looking after Baelfire. She looked at her husband, hanging limply between the two men.

“What are you going to do to him?” she said, trembling.

The Duke’s son smiled at her. “He’s going to be made an example of,” he said. “People need to know what happens when cowards run.” He stepped too close to her. “Go back to your house, woman.”

She shook her head. “He’s my husband.”

He struck her then. “Don’t make me tell you again,” he said, “or you will share his fate.”

Milah shuddered. Bae. Bae needed her to be whole and unscathed. She turned and started back towards the house, and heard someone mutter, “Runs just like her husband.”

She held her head up high and walked stiffly to the house. Calia was standing by the window with Bae. 

“What happened?”

Milah stared blankly at her. “They say the legion from the village is wiped out,” she said, her voice trembling. “They say because he ran, everyone died.”

Calia stared at her. “Everyone?” she asked in a whisper.

“It’s a lie,” Milah said, shaking her head. “He… no one man could stop the ogres, Calia.” She held out her arms for her son, her hands shaking. “Bae can’t hear this. Bae shouldn’t hear any of this.”

“Of what?”

Milah sank to sit on the stool by the hearth, covering her son’s ear. “They’re going to punish him,” she whispered.

There were simple punishments issued by the Duke’s men: if you stole, you lost a hand. It you lied, you lost your tongue. If you listened to rumours and treachery, you lost your ear. If you ran, you would never be able to run again. 

She covered Bae’s ears and held him tight, and closed her eyes.

Even from a distance, she heard the hollow, fleshy sound, the crackle of bone, and she heard her husband screaming.

 

_____________________________________________

 

 

She no longer had a name.

Even Calia turned away from her. 

Rumpelstiltskin’s leg never healed truly. The bones were shattered, and for months, he lay in an agonised delirium and could not spin. Because he could not spin, they could not pay their dues to the Duke, and the Duke’s son took great pleasure in forcing them from their home, and into a smaller cottage.

Baelfire didn’t understand why other children pushed him over, and when he returned home grazed and weeping, the taunts of “Coward” followed him. He was loved, in the shelter of the cottage. Rumpelstiltskin seldom spoke anymore, but he always had kind words for Bae. His son’s pain hurt him more than his own. 

Milah was better at concealing the wounds. 

Children threw rocks at her, and when she dared to cuff them across the ear, their parents would turn on her, demanding why she had the right to strike their children, when it was her husband’s fault those same children had no father.

It was all borne of a lie, a terrible lie, and because of it, he was the scapegoat. No one would believe that he had no part in the slaughter. None of those who stood in the village had stood on the battlefield. They believed the man they had hated until then. They believed him, and they turned their venom on her, for her husband never emerged from their home.

They wanted a target and they had one. 

She was charged higher prices for food that even a beggar would have scorned. The wool that Rumpelstiltskin spun no longer fetched half the price it should have done, and more often than not, they barely had enough to scrape by on.

She begged and pleaded for him to show his face, to make a stand, to show he was not the coward they believed him to be.

Bent and broken, he looked up at her, as if she couldn’t understand. “Let them blame me if they want to, Milah,” he said. “They need someone to blame.”

She wanted to shake him, to scream that they weren’t blaming him, because he was never there to have stones thrown at him or to be insulted. He wasn’t the one accosted in the street. He didn’t have to face it all. She and Bae were the ones who were suffering for it all.

Once, she thought she could have loved her husband, but with every passing day, she wondered if it was a sin in the eyes of the Gods that she was starting to hate him. She could not leave him, not as broken as he was, not with Baelfire there too. She had to stay and hope and pray that one day, he might realise that he was not the only one despised.

She walked. She talked. She tended Baelfire. She sold what she could. Bought what she could. She lay numbly in his arms in their little cottage, wondering why he never noticed the bruises and scratches on her limbs. 

He didn’t even notice the night she came back late with bruises in the shape of handprints on her arms. He didn’t notice the stiff way she walked. He didn’t question the reason she scrubbed herself to bleeding in front of the fire. She was the strong one, after all. She was the one that people would not mind so much.

All she could think of was the voice of the Duke’s son in her ear, as he forced her face-down and lifted her skirts. As he whispered, “What are you going to do? Tell your husband?”

The next time she went to market day, she took what little coin they had left over and went to the nearest tavern. They had strong ales there, and for a moment, she could pretend that she was Milah again, instead of the coward’s wife. She had almost forgotten how.

For a little while, she could keep herself from caring. She could speak freely of how tired she was. How frustrated. How disappointed. She didn’t know when frustration turned to contempt and contempt into loathing, but it came at the bottom of a tankard. 

It should have saddened her to realise how much she had come to hate him.

It should have, but it didn’t.

The Duke’s son had come for her too many times. The village’s children had torn their clothing and burned their thatch too many times. The whole world felt like it was against them, and her husband would only tend to Bae and spin, and say that as long as he was unseen, they would forget about him.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who tried to love her husband, but in the end, she started to believe in the lie that had hurt her so much and hated him, just like everyone else.


End file.
